


I guess I don't hate you entirely.

by Wickedrider98



Category: The Bastards Crew, The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: "I don't hate you I guess", Other, just let me have some love/hate friendship type thing, not really canon compliant but it's fine, something like friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wickedrider98/pseuds/Wickedrider98
Summary: Rare instances of Jonny D'Ville not being a *complete* prick.





	I guess I don't hate you entirely.

Jonny didn’t know where he was when he initially woke up. He knew he was in his room and noticed the IVs hanging on metal pipes above his bed, and the tubes leading down to his arms. Jonny’s eyes flicked around the room until they settled on Phantomness, her back turned to him as she readied painkillers. The gunslinger tried to pull himself to a sitting position, until it felt as though his chest was being ripped in half. Jonny groaned and flopped back down.  
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Phantomness’s voice was hollow, “The Doc says your stitches won’t be healed for a while.”  
“So it’s done then?” Jonny asked.  
“Yep. You’re immortal now, or at least that’s what The Doc says.”  
He nodded, smiling.  
“Excellent.”  
“I guess,” Phantomness shrugged, “an immortal sadistic fuck with a revolver and nothing better to do. What could possibly go wrong?”  
Jonny laughed, causing him to groan with pain.  
“You got anything to help with this?” He moaned, wincing.  
“Yeah, yeah I’m working on it.”  
“Well work faster.”  
Phantomness turned to him, syringe in hand. She inserted it into his IV, emptying it into the tube. Jonny sighed, letting the drug take effect.  
“Much better.” He murmured, “so what did she do with it then?”  
“With what?” Phantomness asked, cleaning the needle from beside him.  
“The heart. What did she do with it?”  
“No clue,” she replied, “I was just there to hand her instruments. She took it out and left with it. I don’t know what happened to it afterward, and I probably don’t want to.”  
Jonny shrugged, now only slightly sore.  
“That’s fair.”  
Now high on painkillers, Jonny found himself able to pull himself into a sit and look down at the hunk of metal that now pumped blood through his body. It looked like a regular human heart, save that it was now silver and able to be seen from the outside.  
“That’s gonna take some getting used to.” he whispered.  
Phantomness nodded.  
“It’ll take some time, but you’ll be fine.” she assured him, “The Doc said you would be.”  
“You’re acting awfully concerned for my well-being for someone who hates my existence.”  
“Yeah well,” Phantomness muttered, “you make for better company than the Doc I guess. You should get some rest though.”  
Jonny nodded, settling back down and dozing off.  
***  
“Why do you always wear that mask Phantomness?” Carmilla asked over dinner one night. Phantomness nearly choked on her potato.  
“I…” she stammered, “I was born with a problem. On the side of my face. People kinda run from me when they see it, so I cover it.”  
Carmilla cocked an eyebrow. Jonny had a gnawing feeling it wasn’t going to end well for anyone involved.  
“It can’t be horrible.” Carmilla replied, her eyes glinting, “let’s see.”  
“I… I don’t really want to do that.”  
“I wasn’t asking.”  
She lunged forward for Phantomness, grabbing her mask and flinging it aside. Phantomness screamed, tumbling backwards and landing on the ground.  
“Dear God.” Jonny whispered. He tried not to stare at the side of her face she’d tried so hard to keep concealed, but it was near impossible. The ripped metal that had been hidden under the mask was alarming enough, but the diodes and wires that protruded from them didn’t seem like something she'd been ‘born with’. Phantomness stared at him and Carmilla, doe-eyed and crying. Carmilla appeared unruffled.  
“That's… different,” she remarked, “but I fail to see how you were born with that.”  
“I… nobody knows,” Phantomness whimpered, scrambling for her mask, “I was born like this and no one really knows why or how.”  
Carmilla moved to kick the mask farther away from the crying girl, only to be met with Jonny's gun in her face.  
“You've embarrassed her enough, I think.” he growled, nudging it towards Phantomness.  
“You're being uncharacteristically nice,” Carmilla pointed out.  
“I like her a hell of a lot more than I do you, so if I had a choice between you and her.”  
The Doc shrugged.  
“Well, you're rather revolting,” she said to Phantomness, to Jonny she added, “and you need to learn some respect for your creator.”  
“That’s the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all day.” Jonny spat. Carmilla rolled her eyes and rushed off to her room upstairs. Jonny walked over to Phantomness, who had replaced her mask and pulled herself to her feet.  
“Gimme your gun.” She snapped, reaching for his revolver.  
“Phantomness-” Jonny started.  
“You and I both hate her, let’s just do it already!”  
Jonny shook his head, keeping the weapon out of her reach.  
“Look, I know that you and I both hate her, but she’s your and my ticket off this planet. That’s what you want, isn’t it? So best we just don’t.. what do you Midgardians say? Let Hel hold what she has,” Jonny winked, “for now.”  
Phantomness clenched her fists.  
“I wish she would just take nine steps.” She muttered, “I never thought I would see the day you turned down murder.  
Jonny snorted.  
“You and me both.”  
***  
“MAYBE I DON’T WANT WANT TO BE A PART OF THIS ANYMORE!” Jonny could hear Phantomness screaming from the lab downstairs. He groaned. This had become a near-daily argument.  
“You can’t back out, you have a contract! You’re stuck here until I say you can leave!” Carmilla shouted back. He heard the sound of doors slamming and an angry masked teenager storming up the stairs, and found an angry Phantomness seated on his bed pouting.  
“Rough day?” Jonny inquired, pouring her a drink. Phantomness nodded, downing the glass.  
“Once again I suggest we make her take nine steps.” She hissed, “gimme a cigarette.”  
“What?”  
“I want a cigarette. Give. Me. A. Cigarette.”  
Jonny shook his head.  
“I don’t think so.” He pushed his pack of cigarettes out of her reach.  
“What the fuck Jonny? You smoke all the time?” She snarled, “I just want a smoke.”  
“I can’t die, you can. And since you make for better company than the Doc, I’d rather not give you something that kill you.”  
Phantomness cocked an eyebrow.  
“Is that your way of saying we’re friends?” She questioned, refilling her cup.  
“No!” Jonny found himself growing more defensive than he liked, “I just don’t think you’re the worst person here.”  
Phantomness rolled her eyes and offered her glass. Jonny filled his own and clanked it against hers.  
“To… tolerating each other?” Phantomness offered.  
“To tolerating each other.”  
***  
“So, what’s their name again?” Jonny asked, staring at the unconscious person laying on the bed in the room.  
“Ashes O’Reily,” Phantomness replied as she readied the same painkillers she’d given him after his own Mechanism procedure, “some sort of disgraced mobster was what The Doc said. I think anyways. Regardless, they needed a new pair of lungs and The Doc obliged.”  
Jonny nodded and lit a cigarette before moving to stare out the observation window, watching the stars as The Aurora passed through the black of space.  
“How do you think they’ll react to their shiny new additions?” He took a draw.  
“Hard to say. They didn’t exactly agree to this like you did, but I imagine they’ll be grateful to be, y’know, alive.” Phantomness moved to inject the painkiller into Ashes’ IV.  
“You’re injecting them before they wake up?” Jonny questioned.  
“Yeah, The Doc’s orders.”  
“I’m guessing she learned from me to get ahead of the pain.”  
“No, she asked me to drug you before you woke up.”  
“Then… why did you wait?”  
The masked girl shrugged.  
“I felt like it.”  
Jonny huffed.  
“Well, fuck you too.” He muttered.  
They were interrupted by thrashing from Ashes in the hospital bed.  
“Looks like we’re about to find out how they feel.” Jonny muttered.  
***  
Despite not wanting her to, Jonny couldn’t blame Phantomness for leaving. He had gained his mechanism consensually, Ashes had theirs to save their life, but drugging her while she was asleep and replacing her flesh and blood stomach with metal was a new low. Even for The Doc. Even though Phantomness had just kept getting sicker and sicker as her stomach lining started being consumed by some strange parasite, she’d stayed firm on her want to not become a mechanism.  
“I want to go out on my own terms,” she insisted, “I’m not going to become one of you. I’m sorry, but I just won’t.”  
But The Doc had other plans, which involved slipping into Phantomness’s room, putting anesthesia into the IV already in her arm, and removing said failing body part in exchange for a shining metallic one. Jonny had no idea what had happened until the following morning he awoke to a bloodcurdling scream. He raced to the sick bay, where he found Ashes with Phantomness, who was gently touching the metal organ that now protruded out from her body. Jonny turned to see The Doc behind him, smiling maniacally. Jonny grabbed her by the collar, flinging her against the wall and holding his revolver to her head.  
“What the fuck did you do!?” He shouted, “what did you do to her!”  
Carmilla never lost her smile.  
“I made her better,” she explained, “now she’s free of the parasite, and free from death. I succeeded.”  
“You did the exact thing she didn’t want!”  
“Jonny,” Ashes warned.  
Jonny dropped the doctor, and strode over to Phantomness and Ashes.  
“I don’t understand why she’s moping,” Carmilla said, “I made her immortal. She can’t die.”  
“‘She’ didn’t want this,” Phantomness wailed, “I didn’t want to become part of a bunch or mechanical delinquents!”  
The next few months were spent keeping Phantomness occupied, in an attempt to take her mind off of what she now was. Over time she came to terms with it, but knew she couldn’t stay. But she was bound to Carmilla by a contract that threatened her bodily harm if she left. Despite now being unable to die, she knew that The Doc was capable of making her life a living hell. Jonny and Ashes had managed to distract her with anesthesia in a glass of wine while Phantomness fled off The Aurora. Though now as she stood at the port, staring down at New France, Jonny could see she was worried.  
“We’ll keep her far away from you as best we can.” Ashes assured her, “you just keep out of public eye, would you?”  
“I hear there’s a lovely Underground Society in the catacombs.” Phantomness murmured, staring down at her collection of knives, “I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”  
“You’re thinking like a Mechanism,” Jonny jarred, “you could stay.”  
“I’ll do what I need to do to survive.” She responded, her eyes not leaving the planet ahead of her, “I’m sorry you two are gonna be stuck with… her.”  
“We’ll figure it out.” Ashes clasped her shoulder, “now get going.”  
Phantomness nodded.  
“I don’t know if I’ll see you two again, but it’s been… you made this tolerable,” she motioned to The Aurora, “I can’t say I’ll miss you, but… Goodbye.”  
She turned and grabbed her bag before striding off towards New France.  
***


End file.
